Let's talk with three real people today about how they dealt with the non-financial side of transitioning into retirement, how they spend their time, find fulfillment, and a sense of purpose in this, the 156 episode of the Retirement Planning Education Podcast.

Welcome to the Retirement Planning Education Podcast, where you can learn all about IRAs and Roth IRAs, employer

retirement plans, taxes, social security, Medicare, portfolio withdrawal strategies, annuities,

estate planning, and much more. And now here's your host, Andy Panko.

Howdy y'all, welcome back. Today is another real person episode of the show but i'm breaking from the

standard real person format words one person for the whole show where i asked them the same series of

questions as i ask all the other real people and this one will be more akin to the uh divorce episode i did a few months ago where I talked with multiple people about who got divorced later in life after having established relatively long marriages where what they wish they would have known or done differently through the process.

You know, it was interesting to hear different people's responses and life circumstances and input on that.

So with that sort of format in mind, today's episode is about three people where I asked them how they dealt with the sort of emotional aspect of transitioning to retirement,

specifically with kind of a focus on sense of purpose and meaning

and doing things to fill their time, to fill what's often a void for people as they retire.

This episode is completely non-financial, but avoid in the sense of, for better or worse,

a lot of people have their identity and sense of purpose and meaning and value tied up in the work that they do.

And when that's gone, there's often this whole, this void, like I said, of like, now what do I do?

Like, what's my purpose here?

What's my meaning here?

Now, a lot of people don't struggle with that, whether it's helping family or volunteering

or there's grandkids or something that quickly fill your time and

provides a lot of satisfaction fulfillment, et cetera. But for some people, especially those who

retire abruptly or otherwise didn't plan or put a lot of, you know, planning behind, what am I

going to do, how I'm going to fill my days, what's going to be the new me going forward? This

could be a really rough transition. So that's what today's episode is. Before we get into it,

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